Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Week Of Vintage: Re-Vamping Vintage, Part IV

Today's vintage week installment is altering a '60s mod print shift dress. Originally, this dress must have been worn by someone much straighter through the hips and waist than me. I, however, am the opposite of that so I'm making this garment work for me by opening the hips and trimming the waist.

Step 1
Try on the garment and determine where modifications need to be made. For me, the dress needed a little extra room in the hips and a little less room in the waist. I marked with a safety pin the widest part of my hips and narrowest part of my waist, then turned the garment inside out to work on the side seams. Using my tailor's chalk, I freehanded lines just outside the hip side seams, gently tapering to just inside the waist side seams. I didn't use any measurements for this project because I'm only working about 1/2 inch inside or outside the seams. Of course Bandit has to check out what I'm working on.

Step 2

I stitched my new markings (blue line) on the machine and then cut open the side hip seams (just to where it met up with the waist seams that I took in). After that, I pressed my new seams. I also let out the seam just below the zipper (butt area) a little bit, as well.

Step 3

I tried on the dress and decided the hips and waist side seams were good, but the fabric still bunched in my lower back area. I thought this might be an issue so I was prepared to freehand some back darts. Back to the tailor's chalk - again, I freehanded this as much as possible to prevent pulling out tons of sewing supplies and trying to get this done quickly. I folded the back darts in half and pinned.

Step 4

I stitched the new back darts on the machine (two total) and pressed each towards the zipper.

Step 5

I marked the hem (just above the knee) and hemmed by hand (see my hemming tutorial here). There is a pocket flap on the front of the dress and David helped me decide which vintage buttons to replace the dirty covered button. I sewed that on as a final step. My dad picked up most of these vintage buttons at an antique store.

Nice tutorial and the little rabbit is so cute ! I always find it very difficult to alter vintage items, especially old ones. I'm often afraid the 'alteration' just won't turn out as good as i thought it would and I couldn't wear the item anymore. A few days ago I took in the side seams and darts of a 50s dress I've ha for over a year now. It was a tad bit too big but now it fits me really well. I can't wait to see how your dress turns out ! :)

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